At breakfast we served up the script cuts, which were taken gracefully. Then we miraculously arrived early at the venue – the Mafikeng International School- for our tech time. Unfortunately the crew were late, but we passed the time with set repairs. Back to wall fixing, this time with Tshego’s assistance, now a breeze due to past experience.
I found a sneaky source of internet, hurrah! And had brief stolen moments while the cast teched ‘Door’, filtering through hundreds of facebook updates to find any snippets of news from home. Missing friends and loving plans of catch-ups and wine-tour adventures when I return.
Then tech rehearsal for R&J. Not as much variety available with our lights this time so we’ll have less flashy colour range and mood changes. There is also an unfortunate long gap between stage and audience so it will be interesting to see how this affects the students’ response.
wall brilliance
The festival organizers Neville and Derrilyn mentioned to me that English literacy is lower here at this festival, as some of the students come from more remote and under-privileged towns. They warned me that often students will nod when you ask if they understand the given task, only to discover down the track that they hadn’t comprehended, usually due to a language barrier. I had a great chat with this pair, responsible for the running of these regional schools festivals. They said they had researched and had found no other programs like this in the world; only a Victorian schools fest in Australia coming close to something like it. It would be a fabulous if we did have an equivalent National program of schools festivals. It would not only be brilliant to expose the millions of students to more arts experiences, but it would also be an incredible opportunity for arts employment. Very inspiring…. If only I had the motivation and business-mind for organizing such a happening.
We had a later finish than expected, due to the late start. So though we had planned to rehearse this evening, we postponed to the morning instead, when energy and focus will be optimum. The majority of the cast went to friend’s family braii for dinner but I was still stuffed from the night before and couldn’t fathom two braiis in a row. No braii stamina. It must take practice and lengthy cultural indoctrination. I’m still working on my bbq endurance skills.
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